Green Bay Packers: Who is Ted Thompson’s next diamond in the rough?
As if you didn’t know, Green Bay Packers fans, different styles are apparent in baseball, football, running an office or factory, right on down the to NFL reports.
Uncharacteristically, it’s time I go out of my own style and take the risk and pick a long-shot, make a prediction, and make it a dark horse.
Who’s going to be the next Pro-Bowler drafted by Ted Thompson?
We’ll go a few extra steps out and predict it will be an undrafted walk-on.
You betcha.
It’s back to basics for me and the Packers.
With NFL teams, the winners percentage-wise are those that have the bigger lines of scrimmage. This has always have been true, all the way back to the Lombardi years, even back to Curly Lambeau‘s tenure.
The teams that win are not only bigger, but stronger and faster – and so many times it boils down to character. What are your centers, guards and tackles made of upstairs and in their heart?
We can now pull out all the descriptions to talk about today’s Green Bay Packers teams. You take a look at them and they look like they are ready to rock, roll and rumble.
Put them between the hash marks and they are, and they do. In today’s NFL they have to be – it’s all about domination.
It seems that a 310-pound lineman is small. Many interior linemen are carrying 390 on the large end. That’s approaching 100 pounds more than the Glory Years (1961-67).
A six-foot frame cannot hold 400 pounds or muscle without stresses causing problems.
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- Packers’ tackle depth chart after second week of free agency
Most Pro Bowl-caliber players are higher up the height/weight charts. Size matters, but only so much. We all have seen the smaller man knock a bigger, taller player back and down. One such player was just signed this week as a walk-on.
This tryout goes by the name Vince Kowalski, a six-foot, four-inch, 309-pound tackle, who you can bet will attempt to do more than play tackle. It might sound like his mere 309 pounds and a player who might have a hard time against 6-7 defensive ends weighing upwards of 400 pounds.
Packers GM Ted Thompson has a knack for bringing in good kids, so we’d bet Kowalski is no troublemaker. Good work ethics and well grounded values go a long way in making the final 53-man cut in Green Bay.
Kowalski might start by eating two steaks and four eggs for breakfast, and follow the team’s advice on the rest of his beefing up, which is a logical effort to adjusting to the pros: Getting as big as they come.
It might make a good office pool to guess his starting weight come September. Out on the limb, mark Vince Kowalski down to make that roster at somewhere near 348 pounds. Kowalski’s attitude at Villanova made him a model player, always doing and saying positive things as a leader.
It’s all about domination, on the dirty-down, hard-knocks job linemen learn to love in the trenches. Kowalski will need to take all the steps demanded of him, of course, to realize the dream of playing in Green Bay.
We think he will, and that makes him the 2015 dark horse who makes the cut.
In hearing about Kowalski’s signing this week, we sat down and dug up all we could on his football life.
One glaring stat made him seem questionable. However, every single other attribute a coach would want scored high for Kowalski, except for not being one of the biggest tackles around.
With Aaron Rodgers being the same height (6′-4) the Packers quarterback would be able to see his receivers better than having a 6-7 monster blocking in front of him.
So his size does have an up-side.
This kid could be one of the final pegs this line needs to make it approach a Redskin ‘Hogs’ or the Tough Guys running the Lombardi sweep of seasons gone by.
He might be a small kid, from a small town, and a small school, signed by the team with the smallest market, joining a team in the top-five.
He joins a group of top linemen who are turning the corner as a top line.
Let’s hope Kowalski is the next guy to poke a hole in every front Eddie Lacy penetrates, or stops the rush as Aaron Rodgers has time in the pocket.
He could very well be that diamond in the rough.